Her Thick, Grey
Hair Hangs In Shocks, The Tattooing Round Her Mouth Has Nearly
Faded, And No Longer Disguises Her Really Handsome Features.
She
is dressed in a much ornamented bark-cloth dress, and wears two
silver beads tied round her neck by a piece of blue cotton, in
addition to very large earrings.
She has much sway in the house,
sitting on the men's side of the fire, drinking plenty of sake, and
occasionally chiding her grandson Shinondi for telling me too much,
saying that it will bring harm to her people. Though her
expression is so severe and forbidding, she is certainly very
handsome, and it is a European, not an Asiatic, beauty.
The younger women were all at work; two were seated on the floor
weaving without a loom, and the others were making and mending the
bark coats which are worn by both sexes. Noma, the chief's
principal wife, sat apart, seldom speaking. Two of the youngest
women are very pretty - as fair as ourselves, and their comeliness
is of the rosy, peasant kind. It turns out that two of them,
though they would not divulge it before men, speak Japanese, and
they prattled to Ito with great vivacity and merriment, the ancient
Fate scowling at them the while from under her shaggy eyebrows. I
got a number of words from them, and they laughed heartily at my
erroneous pronunciation. They even asked me a number of questions
regarding their own sex among ourselves, but few of these would
bear repetition, and they answered a number of mine.
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